family room

we moved into our townhouse in fall of 2009 from a two-bedroom 650-square-foot apartment. we had a few furniture pieces but many of them were dwarfed by the bigger rooms in our new place. my original tactic for decorating was "tackle the whole house now" since i wanted every room pieced together perfectly right away! you know that feeling. so i shopped at my favorite stores and looked for good deals, only to get home and not actually have a place for things.
i couldn't seem to make the magic happen.

so... enter kirsten this spring. i was hesitant to hire someone because i didn't want to spend money on ideas and a decorator, and then not be able to buy the furniture and accessories. one of the great things about kirsten is that she let me have as much control as i wanted. the more i handled, the less she charged.

she helped a lot at the beginning. she sent 50 fabric images to me and had me rank them, we talked about overall style, decided on the room layout, and how to add curtains--all the big things. once a few of the fabrics were selected and we had layouts for the rooms, i went to work and found multiples of furniture pieces for the room. i would throw a bunch of links in an email, like five coffee tables i liked for instance, and she helped me narrow it down and explained why one or two were better than the others.

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photography by jessica kettle

one of my favorite things about the room is how it lights up at night. the lamps warm the room and make it feel so cozy!

i absolutely love what kirsten helped me create and i would use her again in a second! the biggest headache? the picture wall. number of returned items? one, a solid blue rug that was too green. total months to complete? 6. best bargain? the wall clock. biggest splurge? the coffee table.

here is a source list if you're interested:

rugs | williams-sonoma home
ikat chairs | csn stores
couch | ashley furniture
coffee table | crate & barrel
table lamps | homegoods
side tables | kohl's
mirror table | west elm
frames & books | thrifted
tv stand | target
floor lamp | amazon, robert abbey
gold poufs | ebay
wallpaper | walls, veneto: printers guild production
clock | ebay
curtains | wilmington

i've been wondering if it would ever happen

photography by jessica kettle

and i think we're getting closer!
i worked with kirsten krason last spring to update my family room.
she taught me so much about design throughout the process,
 and i love the pattern and texture in the room.

i'll be sure to give you sources and more deets when we have all the photos.
hopefully for reals this time in the next week or two.

home stretch

my friend diana took this holga of my neighborhood.
i'm completely obsessed with its imperfect lines, the red trax train & gorgeous sky.
i may ask if i can make a print of it for my new frame collage.

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speaking of mi casa... we're on the home stretch of the family room update.
i have wallpaper samples scattered to & fro
while i try to decide on the perfect fit for the accent wall.

and i've been busy diy-ing these beauties from the classifeds.



when i was out spray painting last week, a friendly neighbor who i hadn't met before stopped to say hello. turns out she is a diy genious and is lending me her staple gun for the reupholstery. bless her!

i'm so excited to wrap up this project when i'm back in town. in just two short days--wahoo!

a blue family room

i have a new tactic in getting my house put together the way i want it. i'm focusing on one room at a time, and it's refreshing to not feel so overwhelmed. the family room hasn't received much attention since we moved in. picture white walls, square storage cubes as a makeshift coffee table, and limited seating.

i'm six weeks into the family room update and here is its current state.

i'm still working on a rug, something to adorn the wall above the couch, and creating an accent wall where the tv sits. every time i get distracted and find the perfect something for another room, i tell myself to fogitaboutit. so far so good.

once the room is complete sometime this month, i'll give you a little walk around with before pics.

freedom

as of yesterday, both of us are off the working clock until 2011!
that's sixteen sweet days of freedom--no alarm clocks, no dress clothes, no ticking & tying.
now if i could just freeze time... hmf.

we kicked off the break skiing at the bird, giddy to be out for the first time this season.

here's to hoping for more white fluff over the break.

other plans before 2011? i'm working on a few house projects.

i spruced up this wall with some frames laying around and two new ikea beauties.

it's part of my family room update or rather my first attempt to do anything with that room.

i'm really excited about what's in the works. more on that soon.

also in the house...
we're making a spare bedroom more permanently a spare (stub is moving in for a few months).

we added shutters in place of paper blinds and painted over the multiple swatches of blue hues

among other things. pictures in a week or two.

welcome christmas break!

a walk around

jared & i played christmas music and watched the snow fall outside during
a utah storm a week ago. we couldn't resist adorning our house with a little red+green.

a lish christmas:

the miniature nutcrackers are new this year, and i'm so happy to have them.
the rest of the decorations can be seen in a christmas past.

i made a goal this season to finish my holiday shopping before december. over zealous?
it's looking like it. i've got four days left and my shopping list has more lines
without checkmarks than with.

tour di lishes

ahhh i live for house projects lately! anything i can do to spruce up a space on the wall or pretty a corner in a room makes me smile. it's been one year since we moved into our townhome and i want to share some projects/rooms i've been working on.

family room painted shelves:

i saw a similar display at alice lane and asked for the paint color. it always helps to see a color on a wall before you paint. this area of the house gets a little update with every season--yellow for summer, christmas wreath in another month or two with a nativity on a shelf, berries in winter, etc.

master bedroom bedding:

we used to have a brown pinstripe duvet on top of our bed. i liked its masculine style and it was so heavy in the winter, but there was too much brown with the duvet and the dark wood furniture. so we swapped the duvet (almost literally, we sold the old duvet on ebay) for this one from west elm. the gray quilt at the foot of the bed is the quilt i made with my grandma here, and the random shams are from target and anthro. next in this room is paint and draperies.




master bathroom:

we added the rug (also from west elm) and a few hooks and nic-nacks on the wall. it needs paint and something more... just not sure where to go with this one. does the rug look familiar?

guest bathroom:

we had paint leftover from the shelves in the family room and so we thought why not see how it looks as an accent wall in the bathroom. the green undertones of the paint show more in the bathroom, and i love the drastic dark contrasted with the off-white. then we pulled in black & white pictures and a waste basket and clock made of wood.

pendant lamp:

jared just installed this light from cb2. just $50 and we got rid of the classic glass mounted light and added a touch of modern flare.

so there it is--tour di lishes one year after we started making it our own!

one month

the house is coming together nicely, but man we are on the slow track. we’re having a good time finding just the right size furniture in our style that fits the budge. it just takes a little time--one month so far.

the mr. and i spend a lot of our nights after work and most saturdays shopping around and working on mini projects. we get so excited to do an ikea run, hang pictures, install blinds, and (me) decorate. home depot and wal-mart are other frequent stops.

we are nowhere near done, but here are a few projects we’ve started:

{bookshelf}
i adore the color. we’re going to need to incorporate this blue throughout the house. i think we’ll paint a room a very, very light version of this color.

{shutters}
biggest pain/expense of my life, but hopefully worth it. goodbye fishbowl and creepy neighbors who watched our every move at night.

{kitchen table}
$99 at ikea. oh, i love you ikea. we have 4 more of the green chairs coming to replace the brown folding chairs.

{desk}
hopefully very functional in the family room and near the kitchen. we clearly spend a lot of time on the computer.

{wreath}
dear rebecca, you put leaves, berries & pine cones together so beautifully. thanks for making this with me and cheering me up after a crappy day. the neighbors love it.

{blinds}
very functional, very affordable & hopefully discrete.

i’m also busy selling everything that we no longer have a use for. goodbye bathroom vanity, farewell big brown, and sayonara laptop. we will see you on the flip side.

our new abode

it's been a really exciting week on the home front, literally. as you know, jared was out of town for 10 days over the past couple of weeks. i worked a lot while he was gone and then spent my evenings driving the neighborhoods of salt lake from bountiful to lehi. yea, not fun but i got a great feel for all of the communities and checked out the real estate. i was open to pretty much anything since we've been "looking" for about a lifetime now.

last weekend we found a new, modern townhouse in salt lake proper where we will be moving in mid-september. it makes me want to jump and shout for two reasons: 1 - a new place means new decorating and new space to fill, and 2 - i will be 8 miles from my office and won't be driving 2 hours a day. hooray!

it has 3 beds, 3 baths, windows galore, a 2-car garage, and a trax station 100 yards from the front door. bring on the painted walls and bbqs!

*colors are a little off and there are a few slight differences, but i had to give you the idea.

living and breathing again

i always feel the pressure to post something awesome when i've neglected the blog for a while. i'm pretty sure this won't be a life-altering post, but hey... i'm back! and i've missed you guys.

work is going well. no, seriously--i'm actually enjoying it, and i'm not lying through my teeth. i've met some awesome people and made lots of new friends in the last few weeks. i feel so grateful to have the experience of starting a career and just to be at this point in life. i'm taking it all in and learning as much as possible. bring out the cheez ball...

the last few weeks have made me realize that starting a career is one of those defining moments in life where you reflect on your past and learn all kinds of things about the person you are. the last month has reminded me of experiences like study abroad & the jr. core in college. you just can't replace it with anything else!

the commute from orem to downtown is my new hell, but hopefully we can get our act together and move one day. still no word on the house. about every week there is an episode that goes like this: i get really frustrated hating the commute and get super impatient and semi freak out, jared calms me down and talks some sense into me and tells me it's all going to work out, and then i'm okay for another week. poor guy. how does he do it?

on another note... i'm working on a little fix-er-up project reupholstering an office chair. i bought a retro 1970's chair from my favorite ksl classifieds, and i'm changing the fabric to ikea's patricia line:


i want to use my handy sewing machine (bday gift from the mr.) to whip up some draperies and a throw pillow in one of these matching fabrics. it's a little crafty for me, but i'm excited about it.
happy weekend & hopefully we will both be seeing more of each other.

xoxo,

candace